Yes, but there are so many people who have never played a roguelike before, you have to help them figure out if they would like the game or not. You don't write a review for the people who are almost guaranteed to like the game just because it's a roguelike. If a game's appeal is limited, you bring it up in your review and ideally you explain whom it would appeal to and why.

maybe they could actually explain the genre in the review and say 'oh you will die a lot, the genre is like that so if you don't like dieing don't play this game' and then give an appropiate review anbd score relative to the games in the genre.

Games that play like the old PC RPG "Rogue". Basically, you have randomly created dungeons with completely random item and monster spreads, and if you die you lose EVERYTHING and have to start over at the beginning. The games reward the player's ability to adapt to awkward situations and to utilize their environment and the items they are given over any kind of foresight or planning.

That's kinda unfair, because the "rogue-like" term doesn't connote any sort of extreme difficulty. You can thank some of the wacky rogue-likes on the DS (like Shiren?) for that. Chocobo's Dungeon on the Wii, for instance, has a very gentle difficulty curve and isn't anywhere near that sort of masochist difficulty.

Did we ever sidestep into the discussion of games that are critical darlings but are generally ignored by the consumers? I'm too lazy to check all 7 pages. Because some games like Beyond Good and Evil were highly acclaimed by critics, but did not sell that well. Granted, the people who did buy it loved it too, but at least if a game is hated it was actually played by enough people to elicit a strong reaction that resonates all over the communities. If a game was ignored, then no one gave a damn about it and it barely made a ripple.

As a fan, I'd say being hated is worse, because at least being ignored can develop a tightly-knit cult following. Being hated (universally) usually implies a bad game, being ignored is more often than not, a product of bad marketing by the parent company. But from a financial perspective, being hated is probably better because it means that enough people went out and spent money that they're pissed off, and it might generate press (even if it's negative).